Blog Tour: Deeper We Fall by Chelsea M. Cameron (Excerpt)

Two years after her best friend was involved in a car accident that caused a traumatic brain injury, Lottie Anders is ready to start her freshman year of college. Ready to move on. Ready to start forgetting the night that ripped her life apart.

Her plans come to a screeching halt when not one, but both brothers responsible for the accident end up back in her life again.

Zack is cruel, selfish and constantly rubbing what happened to her friend in Lottie's face.

Zan is different. He listens to her awkward ramblings. He loves "To Kill a Mockingbird" as much as she does, and his dark eyes are irresistible. His words are few and far between, but when he does speak, she can't help but listen.

The trouble is, Zan was the driver in the accident, and now Lottie's discovered he lied to her about what happened that night. Now she must decide if trusting him again will lead to real forgiveness, or deeper heartache.

“I’m not sure which
of the thousand things you’ve done wrong you’re sorry for now and I doubt you
know either, in this state.”

The elevator opened
on his floor and I got his arm over my shoulder again as we struggled our way
to his door.

“Where’s your
card?” I said.

He opened his eyes
for only a second. “What?”

I shoved him
against the door and started the lovely task of searching his pockets. Of
course he couldn’t be the kind of person who wore their card on a lanyard. I
didn’t either, but I always kept my card in my back left pocket.

He watched me while
I searched, finding it in his back pocket. I tried really hard not to think about
where my hands were going, and that only a little bit of fabric separated my
hand from his skin and other things.

I moved him to lean
against the wall and slid the key card into the door before opening it as
slowly as I could. There was enough light from the hallway to see that his
roommate’s bed was empty and I breathed a sigh of relief as I turned the light
on.

One side of the
room was a disaster. Clothes and cans and random crap everywhere. The other
side was orderly and sparse. I figured that was the Zan side. I got him in and
sort of shoved so he fell onto the bed, banging his head on the wall.

“Ow,” he moaned.

“Shut up,” I
hissed. My brother and Simon were on the other side of that wall, and they were
the absolute last people I wanted to find out about this little adventure.

“‘We are the mirror
as well as the face in it,” he muttered, opening and closing his eyes. “‘We are
tasting the taste this minute of eternity.’” I swung his feet up on the bed and
started yanking his shoes off. “‘We are pain and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.’”

How the hell he was
with it enough to quote poetry but barely able to walk, was beyond me.

“Charlotte?”

“What?” I finally
jimmied his shoes off and chucked them on the floor. I guessed it didn’t matter
if he slept in his clothes, because I sure as hell wasn’t undressing him.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t know
what you’re saying.” He tried to sit up, but I shoved him back down. “Just shut
up and stay here. I’m going to get you some water.”

He nodded and
stayed put. I peered out into the hallway and dashed as fast as I could to the
bathroom and back with a glass I’d found on his desk. I didn’t really care if
it was dirty or not. He wouldn’t know the difference.

Zan was on his side
when I came back.

“Here,” I said,
shoving the water at him. He took it, but his hand was wobbly, so I held it for
him as he sipped.

There, I’d done
something good for my karma. That was it, I was done.

“Charlotte?”

“WHAT?!” I snapped
before I realized how loud my voice was. Shit. I clapped my hand over my mouth,
as if I’d screamed a curse word in church.

“I’m Boo Radley.”

“You’re what?” He
sort of slurred it, so I wasn’t absolutely sure that was what he said. What did
Boo Radley have to do with anything?

Katie Hallman is done with douchebags. Done with guys who treat her like crap and leave her broken. But then Stryker Grant is there anyway. With his numerous piercings and bleached hair, he’s the polar opposite of all of her past relationships, which makes him the perfect candidate.

At first, Katie just sees him as a physical escape from her previous rocky relationship, and Stryker doesn’t seem to mind just being a distraction from Katie’s problems. But soon he’s getting under her skin, peeling back layers she’d rather keep covered. She tries to make it clear that she doesn’t want a relationship, but keeps breaking her own rules.

Then a tragedy sends Katie into the only arms who are there to catch her, and she’ll realize that she needs him more than she ever thought possible. But is she ready to let herself trust another guy with her already-battered heart? Or will she push him away to protect herself from getting hurt again?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - Chelsea M. Cameron

Chelsea M. Cameron is a YA/NA New York Times and
USA Today Best-Selling author from Maine. Lover of things random and
ridiculous, Jane Austen/Charlotte and Emily Bronte Fangirl, red velvet cake
enthusiast, obsessive tea drinker, vegetarian, former cheerleader and world's
worst video gamer. When not writing, she enjoys watching infomercials, singing
in the car and tweeting. She has a degree in journalism from the University of
Maine, Orono that she promptly abandoned to write about the people in her own
head. More often than not, these people turn out to be just as weird as she is.

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